


One Without The Other

by gracie137



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Drinking, Established Relationship, Feels, First Kiss, First Love, First Time, First War with Voldemort, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Getting Together, Heartbreak, Hogwarts, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Jealousy, Kissing, M/M, Marauders Friendship, Marauders' Era, Pining, Romantic Friendship, background Lily and James, i mean its the marauders like... we know how it ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 12:19:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14544597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracie137/pseuds/gracie137
Summary: Remus knew that Sirius loved him, but he also knew that Sirius would always love James more.





	One Without The Other

**Author's Note:**

> I have had absolutely awful writer's block for the last month and managed to overcome it to write this angsty little piece that was inspired by a conversation on the discord last night.
> 
> It's different from my usual style, but I hope you like it anyway <3

Remus tried to tell himself that it didn’t bother him. He tried not to resent James too strongly for the way Sirius’s gaze always clung to James for that moment too long… because Remus remembered a time when he’d resented Sirius for holding too much of James’s attention. That had been at the beginning… those first couple of weeks at Hogwarts when James started talking to him, joking with him, acting like he wanted to be his friend.

Remus had never had friends before. He’d certainly never had a friend like James before, and so he tried not to be bitter about the fact that Sirius hadn’t wanted him there.

Sirius’s unhappiness at Remus’s addition to the twosome could be seen from Space, but Remus took small comfort in the fact that Sirius clearly hated James recruiting Peter even more. And the thing that had comforted him was that out of all the other boys in their year, in Gryffindor, in the school, someone like James Potter had chosen him.

He’d worshipped James at first; they all had, but it had always been for Sirius that James’s smile lingered longest. Sirius was the one who James had proudly proclaimed was his  _ brother from another mother. _

_ Potter and Black, _ people said, even when they only meant to talk about one of them, as if they couldn’t help but put the pair together.

Sometimes even when Remus loved Sirius, he hated him. Hated the loud, brash way Sirius acted, or the sneer that would fall onto his face, and the way James would fall over himself to clear it away. Sirius was one of his best friends, but he was difficult and demanding. He was cruel and James rarely called him out on it; James smoothed over Sirius’s rougher edges, with easy laughs and promises to handle it. 

James just dealt with it as if it were part of the package deal, as if they couldn’t challenge Sirius because that was just who he was.

Sirius Black was all sharp lines and edges that one could cut themselves on if they weren’t careful, and Remus understood this. He knew what it was like to be something more than what people said… he knew what it was like to know that you were born to make things bleed.

The biggest problem was that Sirius wasn’t an utter arse. He was confident and charming, and he was fun. Sirius lived up to his name in every aspect because in every way, he outshined them all.

Remus wasn’t sure when things changed and why he started to resent James more. He wasn’t sure when it became Sirus’s company that he craved, but if he had to guess he would say that it was after they’d confronted him about his condition, when Sirius had sat there staring at Remus, his face unreadable.

Remus could remember it so well; he could remember the weight of James’s arm around his shoulders and Peter pressing pieces of chocolate into his mouth. And he could remember how Sirius sat, arms resting atop his knees as he stared at Remus until a whisper of a smile cracked across his face.

“Trust me Remus, werewolf or not, you’re much less monstrous than any of my family.”

Peter and James had paused as if afraid to react before Remus. Remus had been ready to snap at Sirius, to tell him that it wasn’t funny, when he spotted the glimmer of the ghosts that clung to Sirius and understood that Sirius knew, unlike James or Peter, what it felt like to live with darkness.

So Remus had laughed and Sirius had grinned back, canines flashing.

It was that smile that had changed everything, that understanding that had blossomed between the two of them.

They’d started doing things more — not big things, but they’d felt big to Remus: Sirius offering to join him at the library, sitting next to him in class, heading down to meals, just the two of them. It wasn’t much, but Remus felt a shift in the group nonetheless.

Then it was in fourth year when they sat passing a stolen bottle of Firewhiskey between them long after James and Peter had passed out.

“I’m bored,” Sirius said, the bottle dangling from his long fingers, precariously enough that if it were anyone but Sirius, Remus would worry. However, Sirius Black was nothing if not deliberate when he broke things.

“What do you want me to do about that?” Remus replied, reaching over for the bottle anyway because he fancied a sip.

Sirius shrugged, his eyes looking out the window, tracking the sky. It amused Remus at times that Sirius could live for the call of the night whilst Remus loathed it so much.

“Fancy an adventure?” Sirius said.

Remus didn’t reply. He just took the bottle back from Sirius and stood, liking the way Sirius’s eyes blazed. He didn’t let himself dwell on the reason why Sirius’s eyes made him feel like he had doused himself in gasoline and struck a match. It seemed too dangerous a path to go down.

After the Snape incident, Remus shut himself away from them all. He knew James and Sirius were barely speaking, James’s sense of morality too straight to deal with an incident like this. He knew James was pulling his hair because the group was breaking.

He also knew Sirius felt guilty; he could see it in the near-apologies whenever he caught Sirius’s eyes. He could feel it in the way Sirius seemed half of a whole.

A part of him wondered if it was because James was pissed at Sirius too. The other parts of him didn’t want to think about it.

Sirius fell out of the closet while they weren’t speaking, caught up in the hallways with some bloody Ravenclaw. Sirius hadn’t had to tell Remus that he was gay for him to know, the same as Remus didn’t have to tell Sirius that he liked both.

Remus knew that Sirius hadn’t planned on it coming out, not like this.

He was reckless, desperately spiralling without his friends.

James went back to him first, Peter in tow.

Remus hated that it hadn’t been him first, and hated himself caring because of that.

Things were stilted but they were fixing themselves. Sirius was walking on doxy-shells around them all, and Remus wanted to scream at him to be himself.

It wasn’t until the final night of school that the words escaped him, and he found himself crowding Sirius up against a tree. Sirius’s eyes wide were with the promise of more to come, and his mouth curved into a challenge that Remus couldn’t ignore so he kissed him.

It hadn’t been meant to be more than that. Remus had never even meant to do it at all, but once it happened Remus realised that it had been inevitable.  _ They _ were inevitable, and so he came with Sirius’s hand down his trousers and Sirius’s name a plea on his lips. Sirius came with a whimper, his eyes squeezed tight enough that if Remus dwelled on it, he’d believe he was picturing someone else.

Summer of fifth year came, hot and heavy, and Remus didn’t think much of it when he didn’t hear from Sirius a lot. He knew Sirius was never really able to write during the holidays.

What he wasn’t expecting was an invitation over to James’s halfway through the summer, and an announcement that Sirius was living there officially now.

“Real brothers,” Mrs Potter had teased.

“We were already real brothers,” James laughed, an arm around Sirius’s shoulder.

Remus wondered how no one else saw the strain around Sirius’s mouth at the use of the word  _ brothers _ .

It didn’t stop him from letting Sirius kiss him that night, the two of them stretched out on Sirius’s bed while James and Peter slept in James’s room.

“Are you okay?” Remus asked, his fingers teasing through Sirius’s hair.

Sirius gazed up at the ceiling, his bottom lip caught under his teeth. “I guess so.”

“It’s okay for you to not be.”

“Why?” Sirius asked, “They’re fucking shit people.”

Remus paused because he knew Sirius’s  _ why  _ was more loaded than it seemed.

“Because you loved them once,” Remus settled on. His breath caught in his throat as Sirius leaned up and traced his fingers across Remus’s lips, his fingers following the lines of Remus’s face as if he were trying to memorise something, the same furrow between his brows as there was when he was faced with a problem that needed solving.

“What?” Remus asked, but Sirius didn’t answer, he just kissed him.

Sixth year was a year of many things; for one, Lily Evans stopped hating them as much, which Remus attributed to James beginning to grow up. It was James who had made the call to stop pranking and hexing, Sirius was the one who had yawned and pulled faces, mocking James for moving on.

It was Remus’s bed that Sirius crawled into at night, letting the hangings close around them, shrouding them in red as they moved together, panting and gasping, learning each other’s bodies until it was natural. However, none of that mattered in comparison to the way James and Sirius knew each other after that Summer.

They went home for Christmas now that Sirius had somewhere to go, and when they came back, James wouldn’t meet Remus’s eyes for a week.

He never asked what they gave each other.

Sirius didn’t explode in Seventh Year when James announced that he was officially dating Lily, but he grew quiet. His laughs fell short, and his jokes even shorter. Sirius said it was the looming war and the whispers of Regulus’s newly appointed Death Eater status. Remus accepted his words, but he knew that wasn’t all.

Things changed midway through the year; Sirius started grinning again. He was bright and vibrant, and as he kissed Remus in a way that made his knees weak, he started to speak of their future.

“Of course Prongsy and I are getting a flat together, but you can live with us if you fancy?” Sirius had said, his fingers making easy work of Remus’s robes.

_ Of course _ .

“Think I’m planning on living with Pete,” Remus said, even though he had made no such plans.

He didn’t want to live with James and Sirius. If they lived apart he could go on pretending that he didn’t know the truth. 

A year later, James and Lily moved in together and Remus moved in with Sirius. Peter shacked up with Mary McDonald without complaint.

Remus never asked Lily if she knew. He never told anyone of his suspicions of what was between Sirius and James.

The closest he got was drinking too much and slurring away to Marlene that he was a fucking idiot for falling in love with Sirius Black. She’d laughed and held him tight, and promised that if anyone could tame Sirius Black, it would be him.

She didn’t understand that he didn’t want to tame Sirius, he just wanted Sirius to choose. He wanted to Sirius to choose him, and him alone.

Remus had been in the habit of wanting more than he could have his entire life. He was used to it.

The night that Lily and James got married, Sirius and Remus fucked like their lives depended on it, as if everything they’d felt for each other hinged on that night.

Remus never asked Sirius what had happened during that year he and James had lived together. Sirius would never have told him the truth, but Remus would have known he was lying.

Also, Remus didn’t want those images in his head any more than they already were. He wanted Sirius beneath him, loving him.

Sirius did love him; Remus knew that. The problem was that he would always love James more.

Sirius loved him but not enough to keep Peter from turning them against each other, using the burning vulnerability that had first brought them together to tear them apart.

Kisses and promises. Whispers and touches. It all faded as the war progressed until there was nothing left but secrets and distance. Until  _ that  _ night…

On the first of November whilst the rest of the wizarding world cheered, blinded by euphoria of what little Harry had managed to do, Remus drank to James and Lily. He didn’t try to look for Sirius; he wasn’t sure what would be left of Sirius without James.

It didn’t occur to him what it meant that You-Know-Who had been able to find the Potter’s house until too late.

On the second of November as the rest of the wizarding world mourned for Peter, James and Lily, while congratulating themselves on catching Sirius Black, Remus drank to the loss of everything and everyone he had ever known and loved.

He had long since accepted that it was never going to be  _ James, and Sirius, _ but only  _ James and Sirius, _ so in hindsight, he should have foreseen that the day he lost one would be the day he lost both.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Eeee painful i know, but I hope you enjoyed it!!!
> 
> 2\. Kudos and comments add about 10 years per one onto my life span
> 
> 3\. If anyone has read The Raven Cycle and see's Gansey / Ronan / Adam as being able to mirror James / Sirius / Remus do come on tumblr and talk to me about it because i have FEELINGS!!!
> 
> Find me on tumblr [@gracie137blogs](http://gracie137blogs.tumblr.com)


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